How to Install Zoom on Linux

Video calls via the Internet have been available forever, or at least for as long as I know it. Messaging clients like MSN or Yahoo! Messenger already allowed sharing "cam" and the sound of the microphone, but it was not until the arrival of smartphones that they began to be used a little more. Even so, the real boom hit at the beginning of the 20s (2020), when the COVID19 pandemic also forced us to telework. Many options have been used, but Zoom It has been one of the most popular.

The different media that knew about Zoom since its inception do not agree on why this was the Chosen option for many. If you search the web, there are answers of all kinds, such as good marketing that includes the name of the application, very descriptive, or that it has been one of the first to appear. But few usually explain its growth with the pandemic, since before 2020 it was already rising a lot. For whatever reason, reality is what it is, and there is a lot of interest in Zoom.

What does Zoom offer us?

Zoom offers many products, but basically everything revolves around remote communications. What we know best are the videoconferences, But not all are equal. A video call from one person to another is not the same as one in which dozens of users participate. Nor is it only seeing faces that include the option of using a virtual blackboard, very useful for giving/receiving classes. The above screenshot speaks for itself.

Knowing that we can communicate at a distance, using only the chat, the microphone, the camera or all together, and use its different tools, what perhaps remains to be known is how much they offer it for. Zoom is available for personal and professional use of the platform. The basic plan is the one that will allow us to do meetings of up to 100 people, as long as it does not exceed a duration of 40 minutes, without having to pay a single euro. Then there are three paid plans, the Pro, the Business and the Enterprise, each with more options than the last, but for a higher price.

If what we need is to make more serious use of Zoom, the pro option It will cost us, on the day of publication of this article, €140 per user per year. It's money, but these plans are designed for those who need to hold serious business meetings. For normal use, the basic plan is more than enough. In the worst case, it is called again after 40 minutes.

Installation on Linux

Thanks to next-generation packages, installing Zoom on linux It is very simple, also to explain. We can install it as flatpak and snap packages, and this is valid for any distribution that supports it out of the box or has added support for this type of package.

En this link explains how to add support for flatpak packages, and in this for snap packages. Once added, both options should appear in the different software centers. If we search our software center and find nothing, it can be installed with these commands:

• snap package:

sudo snap install zoom-client

• flatpack package:

flatpak install flathub us.zoom.Zoom

In both cases we will be installing software that has passed through the hands of the community, the first being the official DEB package for Debian/Ubuntu that has been packaged as a snap package.

Download the official package

In the download page we can get the packages offered by the same company, including DEB, RPM, and a tarball, this for distributions like Arch Linux. For Arch users, it's also available in AUR in what to me is the best option; not only is it easier to install (yay -S zoom, as we explained in this tutorial), but also to update.

To install the DEB version (Debian/Ubuntu and derivatives), just open a terminal and type:

sudo dpkg -i "nombre del paquete"

To install the RPM package, the most common will be to write:

sudo rpm -i "nombre del paquete"

In any case, you can double-click the files and choose to install them with the graphical installer, if your distribution offers this possibility.

Web version

Zoom is also available in versión web for those who do not want or cannot install the software. the page is zoom.us/join, where you will have to add the username and password to be able to start using everything that Zoom offers us.

Alternatives

Zoom is one of the most popular options, but not the only one. We can also use others, like:

• Telegram: The messaging application is used to make video calls, although it is more focused on personal use.
• Skype or Whatsapp: It's a little surprising that Zoom has surpassed Skype in popularity, at least when you consider the dates the apps were born. Skype was bought by Microsoft to replace (and incidentally kill) its MSN.
• Google Meet: Google also has its video call application, and it is also used to have meetings of all kinds. That it is not more popular may have to do with a matter of privacy, or because of this company's habit of changing the name of things.
• teams: Also from Microsoft, Teams allows us to make video calls and have remote meetings.
• Discord: It is one of the favorite options for the different Linux communities, partly because they can be created as a kind of servers with different chats separated by themes.
• Signal: This privacy-focused application cannot be left out of this list either, although, like Telegram, it is also more focused on personal use.
• BraveTalk: If we use the Brave browser, in addition to browsing we can also do other things. Among them, private video calls. The bad thing is that we have to do them from the web browser… your web browser.

Whatever you choose, one thing is clear: distance is no excuse for not being productive or dealing more with friends and family.